


Drink to Your Health

by k_rose_m (Flipkat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Shipwrecks, Songfic, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5264339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flipkat/pseuds/k_rose_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a sort-of prompt, actually just a comment, on the kinkmeme, asking for a ghost ship version of the Battleship Condescension. Here’s a version of the song this is based on, "Dark Lady": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qFwWgBnHQY</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drink to Your Health

It is whispered that, when the empress left the planet for good, she commanded a ship the size of city, bearing her name. And _The Battleship Condescension_ , massive as it was, was helmed by a single troll, whose psionic strength had never been matched before. Justly proud of her prize, was the empress. “Oh, none can match my power, my speed, my beauty!” she cackled, and led her crew in a toast to the voyage, to the ship, to the helmsman – “Long may he live!” she laughed.  
The helmsman, watching the video feed, sighed.

Sweeps passed, and further sweeps, as the ship raced outwards from the planet, kept in shape by a city’s worth of lowbloods. The helmsman got a different sort of upkeep, from the empress herself.  
Decades went by, and, though no one dared to mention it, the lowest of grunts were now few and far between. When there were no more goldbloods to be found, the empress went once again to reassure herself of the one still remaining to her.   
“Oh, none can match your power, your speed, my beauty!” she crooned. Her touch lingered on him. That night, she led the crew in another toast, to the voyage, the ship, and the helmsman – “May he stay forever young!”  
The helmsman, shuddering in his renewed flesh, sighed.

Now their course changed, from a mad outward rush into nothingness, into a long, gentle curve back toward the planet they had come from. It grew closer, gradually, as they spiraled back inwards, passing always through unexplored regions and launching probes in all directions.  
Centuries had passed, now, and even the highest-blooded officers had trouble finding underlings they could cull without a second thought. Certain areas of the city-ship had been entirely abandoned to dust and decay. One night, the usual news-data packet from the home planet’s monitors was marked _High Priority Report_. It sparked a furor among the officers, and an immediate course change directly inwards. That night, the empress led a new toast, with what little wine remained.  
“To the young!” she crowed. “Out with the old and in with the new! _He shall be mine!”_  
The helmsman turned his head aside and squeezed his eyes tight to block out the video feed, but he could not avoid the sound. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

Soon, it seemed, though sweeps it may have been, a swift courier was docking, delivering the empress’ new prize, plucked fresh from his home. They had but barely hauled him aboard when the nearest speaker crackled, whined with feedback, and cut out; the next one down the hall spoke instead.  
“I hope you had a good life, kid.”  
In his block, the helmsman watched as his younger self suddenly straightened, shot a surprised look at the speaker, and flashed a thin slice of fangy grin, understanding.  
 _Yeah_ , came the fervent response, not through the dead microphone pickups but inside his head, where no one had spoken for ages now; the officers too stupid not to cull their few remaining blueblooded subordinates had themselves been culled, long ago.

And now, as he released his hold on the visiting ship, letting it fall away (the magnetic clasps had failed sweeps past), and the air and other things rushed out through the airlocks (seized up for want of maintenance), now the whisper in his head was joined by many others, and grew to a roar as, from the outside in, he let go of all the pieces he had been holding together for time unknown. Support beams bent, crumpled, collapsed. Sections of the hull plating peeled off, banging into others and knocking them loose. Shields? What shields? The tell-tale failure lights had themselves failed, burned out with no minders to watch them and no one the wiser. For similar reasons, the nearby asteroid field had gone totally unnoticed until he steered them into it. (It _was_ , after all, the shortest way home.)  
Many bodies, both flailing and eerily still, flowed out the holes that now gaped all over the hull. Many more floated, unmoving, in airless hallways, cut off just _slightly_ too late by the few bulkhead doors that still worked. (He had stopped propping up the worn-through cables that had been threatening to fall away from the gravity generator for sweeps, now.) He was still cackling madly as the voices in his head gradually fell silent – all but two. Suddenly, the empress was there before him, caroming off the wall and swimming madly through a rapidly-diminishing bubble of water. She seethed, but there was nothing more she could do, as old and broken-down, now, as the ship to which she had so foolishly given her name.

The helmsman sneered at her, power crackling in his eyes as she tried desperately to kiss the last breath of air from his lungs. “You grew complacent,” he hissed. “ _I_ am _The Condescension._ ”

Indeed, it is a tale never told above a whisper, that a ship the size of city, launched into space on the whim of a proud empress, still flies like an electron in endless loops around the planet from which it sailed, countless sweeps ago. Surrounded by asteroids and full of holes, sometimes bodies are said be seen drifting around inside it. Rumor has it, though none can say how it started, that in the center of the wreck, the remains of the helmsman and his column twine tightly around the remains of the empress, trapping her in death as she trapped him in life. And, they say, if you are close enough, and tuned to the right frequency at the right time, you can hear the voice of the empress’ ghost as she leads her crew in a nightly toast, a ritual held at their host’s command.  
“To my power, my beauty, my _only love_ , my helmsman, my _ship!_ ”  
“ _Hear, hear!_ ” the ghosts roar in reply.  
And _The Condescension’s_ …Ψ’s!


End file.
